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Jul. 25th, 2010 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardAm in one of those moods where I seriously, seriously hate the idea of traveling cross-country several times a year, moving all my things, etc., etc., and also very much in love with Ellensburg and Washington right now, along with the panic induced by the Newcomb-Tulane College dean's letter -- "you have to start thinking about life after graduation RIGHT NOW" -- which means I'm staring at the University of Washington's graduate program in history (I'm back on one of those kicks where I'm leaning more medieval than classical) and trying to figure out if I like it or not. I'm not -- immediately opposed to it. They don't have military history, but they do make a distinction between Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and Late Antiquity, which is kind of cool, as well as dividing up European history by timeline (medieval, 1450-1789, and after 1789), which I approve of.
...hey, they also have comparative history! I did not realize that was a field! That's kind of cool. It includes historiography (OOOH), comparative ethnicity and nationalism (which...I do not want to touch with a ten-foot pole, I don't want to say "trigger issues", but...yeah), comparative gender (not really my thing), and comparative colonialisms (not really my thing, but it could be interesting). So there's a pretty broad range of fields divided up by area/timeline. (Mostly area; it's only western Europe that gets divided up by time, except for pre-modern Asia and modern Asia, but I'm not an Asian historian, so it's not that big a deal for me.)
The UW would be close to home, at least -- I wouldn't have to worry about getting plane tickets, and people speak like I expect them to speak! And there are mountains! And the sea! And I could go to the Pike Place Market every week (or day, even)! The flip side is that my feelings about Seattle are ambivalent at best and downright hostile at worst -- look, I grew up on the east side of the mountains, we really hate the west side, okay? If I lived on the west side I would be a coastie. A city-slicker! A wet sider! Also the weather sucks and if Mt. Rainier ever blew or the big earthquake that's due on the Pacific coast ever went off...living in Seattle would really suck. But it would be close to home. Only two hours and a mountain range away. No airplanes. (Unless the Pass is closed and the only way to get over the mountains is to fly into Yakima, yada yada yada.)
But they only require reading level of one language to get in. (Well, they don't even require it! They just highly recommend it.) And I'm pretty sure I could get reading level of Latin by the time I apply for graduate school. (Dude, considering the fact that I keep having professors tell me I need to know ALL THE LANGUAGES just to get in to graduate school... -- which is to say, how am I supposed to take classes in my major if I am also supposed to know ALL THE LANGUAGES? Sure, I could take Latin, Greek, French, and German throughout undergrad, but at that point I can't take classes for my major! *sighs*)
...but the UW doesn't offer as much funding as some of the other schools I was looking at do. That's not good. On the other hand, the U is public, so that's cheaper than Brown; on the other hand, I think Brown offers a lot more funding. (On the fourth hand, I am less certain of my ability to get into Brown than I am of my ability to get into the UW.) ...huh. The UW doesn't appear to require teaching on either the MA or the PhD level, which is distinctly odd. Even Tulane requires teaching -- only a semester to UNC and Brown's three years or so -- but still. That's really weird, especially since the UW is a big public school (30,000 undergrads -- the reason I didn't apply for undergrad is because I refuse to go to a university where the student population is larger than my county) and is supposed to have a lot of TAs. More searching gets "encouraged to teach", but not required. I am suddenly much more wary and a lot less enthused, because hi, I always assumed the best way to learn to teach was to...you know, teach, and not take a class called "Orientation to an Academic Career in History", which is probably very useful, but...still. Weird.
Well, it can go on the list, but that's just really weird. More looking gets that you can be a TA or a reader or a pre-doctoral instructor or a list of other things that we don't have at Tulane, but it's not required and that does not make me enthusiastic. At least the UW is going to be easy to visit and talk to the department, compared to most of the other schools I'm thinking of.
...hey, they also have comparative history! I did not realize that was a field! That's kind of cool. It includes historiography (OOOH), comparative ethnicity and nationalism (which...I do not want to touch with a ten-foot pole, I don't want to say "trigger issues", but...yeah), comparative gender (not really my thing), and comparative colonialisms (not really my thing, but it could be interesting). So there's a pretty broad range of fields divided up by area/timeline. (Mostly area; it's only western Europe that gets divided up by time, except for pre-modern Asia and modern Asia, but I'm not an Asian historian, so it's not that big a deal for me.)
The UW would be close to home, at least -- I wouldn't have to worry about getting plane tickets, and people speak like I expect them to speak! And there are mountains! And the sea! And I could go to the Pike Place Market every week (or day, even)! The flip side is that my feelings about Seattle are ambivalent at best and downright hostile at worst -- look, I grew up on the east side of the mountains, we really hate the west side, okay? If I lived on the west side I would be a coastie. A city-slicker! A wet sider! Also the weather sucks and if Mt. Rainier ever blew or the big earthquake that's due on the Pacific coast ever went off...living in Seattle would really suck. But it would be close to home. Only two hours and a mountain range away. No airplanes. (Unless the Pass is closed and the only way to get over the mountains is to fly into Yakima, yada yada yada.)
But they only require reading level of one language to get in. (Well, they don't even require it! They just highly recommend it.) And I'm pretty sure I could get reading level of Latin by the time I apply for graduate school. (Dude, considering the fact that I keep having professors tell me I need to know ALL THE LANGUAGES just to get in to graduate school... -- which is to say, how am I supposed to take classes in my major if I am also supposed to know ALL THE LANGUAGES? Sure, I could take Latin, Greek, French, and German throughout undergrad, but at that point I can't take classes for my major! *sighs*)
...but the UW doesn't offer as much funding as some of the other schools I was looking at do. That's not good. On the other hand, the U is public, so that's cheaper than Brown; on the other hand, I think Brown offers a lot more funding. (On the fourth hand, I am less certain of my ability to get into Brown than I am of my ability to get into the UW.) ...huh. The UW doesn't appear to require teaching on either the MA or the PhD level, which is distinctly odd. Even Tulane requires teaching -- only a semester to UNC and Brown's three years or so -- but still. That's really weird, especially since the UW is a big public school (30,000 undergrads -- the reason I didn't apply for undergrad is because I refuse to go to a university where the student population is larger than my county) and is supposed to have a lot of TAs. More searching gets "encouraged to teach", but not required. I am suddenly much more wary and a lot less enthused, because hi, I always assumed the best way to learn to teach was to...you know, teach, and not take a class called "Orientation to an Academic Career in History", which is probably very useful, but...still. Weird.
Well, it can go on the list, but that's just really weird. More looking gets that you can be a TA or a reader or a pre-doctoral instructor or a list of other things that we don't have at Tulane, but it's not required and that does not make me enthusiastic. At least the UW is going to be easy to visit and talk to the department, compared to most of the other schools I'm thinking of.